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Abstract

Background. The primary aim of the study reported here was to determine the effectiveness of utilizing local spatial variations in environmental data to uncover the statistical relationships between West Nile Virus (WNV) risk and environmental factors. Because least squares regression methods do not account for spatial autocorrelation and non-stationarity of the type of spatial data analyzed for studies that explore the relationship between WNV and environmental determinants, we hypothesized that a geographically weighted regression model would help us better understand how environmental factors are related to WNV risk patterns without the confounding effects of spatial non-stationarity.

Methods. We examined commonly mapped environmental factors using both ordinary least squares regression (LSR) and geographically weighted regression (GWR). Both types of models were applied to examine the relationship between WNV-infected dead bird counts and various environmental factors for those locations. The goal was to determine which approach yielded a better predictive model.

Conclusions. The spatial granularity resulting from the geographically weighted approach provides a better understanding of how environmental spatial heterogeneity is related to WNV risk as implied by WNV infected dead birds, which should allow improved planning of public health management strategies.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Additional Information

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author Contributions

Abhishek K Kala conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Chetan Tiwari conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Armin R Mikler conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Samuel F Atkinson conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Data Deposition

Funding

Funding was provided by the Advanced Environmental Research Institute, University of North Texas. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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